With Paper Tiger, director James Gray returns to a milieu familiar from his first three movies – Little Odessa, The Yards, and We Own the Night – and delivers one of his strongest films in years.

At the heart of this slow burn crime drama – set in Queens, New York in 1986 – are two brothers, family man Irwin Pearl (Miles Teller) and his older brother Gary (Adam Driver), a swaggering former cop who comes to his younger sibling with a business proposition. Utilizing his ties to City Hall, Gary wants to launch a consulting firm offering their services to recently arrived Russian immigrants who have started a clean-up firm for the polluted Gowanus Canal.

Gary, the wheeler-dealer, would get the Russians hooked up with his connections while straight-shooter Irwin, an engineer, would advise them on how to keep the operation up to code. With Gary being bled dry in a divorce and Irwin considering his eldest son’s looming college tuition, this business venture seems like a win-win for both brothers. Unfortunately, these Russians are actually a mob front. When Irwin sees them doing something he shouldn’t have witnessed, he, his wife Hester (Scarlett Johansson) and their two teenage boys are targeted.

Irwin and his family are not street-smart people. They’re a painfully ordinary, working-class family where the most dangerous thing they’ve seen is the revolver that ex-cop Gary keeps holstered to his ankle. Gary is essentially the serpent who enters their modest paradise, tempting Irwin to desire more than he already possesses.

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